Without defending the practice in any way, the Islamic culture has examples in its history of marriages of young girls where the marriage is not consummated until sometimes later. By our standards its a difference between “Are you insane young” and “thats still way too young”.

It is possible that the cleric in question talked about a deferred consummation of this type of marriage and that part of the discussion did not make it into the quotes we see.

Still barbaric, but not quite as barbaric…